Maze Running and other Magical Missions (6 page)

Lee steadied Helen, and they stared at the massive man ahead of them.

He was dressed in rough-cut pieces of fur. And he was hairy: hairy hands, hairy feet, hairy chest, hairy ears, hairy eyebrows, hairy head. He even had black hairs poking out of his nostrils.

But his chin was bare.

The skin on his chin was pale and hairless, grazed and scabby. It had been badly shaved, and it looked cold and sore in the tangle of hair covering the rest of him.

“
You are not Arthur!
” he roared again. “Who are you?”

Helen answered carefully, “We’re two companions on a quest. Who are you?”

“I am the giant Ysbaddaden. I wait here for revenge! We all wait here for revenge!”

The light behind him lurched closer. It was a line of lanterns, held in hairy hands, scaly hands, paws and claws.

The giant spoke again. “Arthur and his knights
shaved
me, to humiliate me! They used a razor stolen from my companion Twrch Trwyth.”

A huge boar stepped into the light, with bristly shoulders as wide as a car and long yellow tusks jutting up out of its black jaws.

“When we heard that Arthur slept here,” the giant rumbled, “we came, bringing others who hate the knights of the Round Table, to have our revenge.”

“To kill them,” said a voice from the darkness.

“To eat them,” whispered another.

“But they’re not here,” continued Ysbaddaden. “So we’ll wait until they return.”

Helen looked at the shapes behind the lanterns. In the gloom, she saw a long low beast with a snake’s head on a spotted cat’s body, more tall hairy men and a wrinkled dragon’s wing.

“But didn’t Arthur and his knights kill everyone they fought?” she asked. “Aren’t you lucky to be alive?”

“Lucky?” spluttered Ysbaddaden. “Was it lucky to be stolen from, to be left beardless and weaponless? Some of us they drove away: my friend the boar was chased into the sea. Some of us they made fun of.” He touched his chin and shivered. “But many of us here are the mothers and sons of those they butchered in their pointless quests. We all wait here for revenge. Why are you here?”

“We’re here to steal Arthur’s scabbard, like he stole from your boar,” said Helen. “Did they leave the scabbard behind?”

“They left nothing behind but dust and horse droppings.”

“Then we should leave you in peace,” said Lee in
his most charming voice. “We wish you patience and good company while you wait; swift and satisfying revenge when your enemies return.”

Lee took a smooth step back, pulling Helen with him.

“I’m hungry!” whined a voice.

There were screeches and growls from beasts Helen couldn’t see and couldn’t understand.

Lee whispered, “If we have to run, get ahead of me. Don’t stop to help me. Don’t wait for me.”

They kept walking backwards through the hollow hill.

Helen spoke directly to Ysbaddaden, hoping he was in charge of the creatures behind him. “Where have Arthur and his men gone? When will they come back?”

“They’ve gone to water their horses, obviously. They will be back before morning. Did you see them on your way here?”

“Oh yes,” said Lee, sincerely and convincingly. “We saw horses at the reservoir. They’ll be back soon. We’ll leave now, so we’re not in your way when they arrive.”

“How long have you waited?” asked Helen, as they moved further from the claws and fingers clutching the lights.

“One long night. It seems to have lasted centuries,” moaned Ysbaddaden. “But they will be back soon, so get out quickly.”

Helen and Lee walked faster.

But a voice rumbled, “No, Ysbaddaden. These
children might warn the knights. And anyway, we are
hungry
!”

The line of lights broke, dark shapes rushed past the shaggy giant, and Lee shouted, “
Run!
”

Helen turned and sprinted through the cave towards the stables. She knew Lee was close behind; she could see the cloudy glow of his cloak on the stones at her feet. But she also knew Arthur’s enemies were following; she could hear them clattering and cursing.

She reached the tunnel and ran straight into the darkness, fumbling for the on-button of her torch. She found it in time to stop herself running into a horsebox. So she kept going up the tunnel, hoping the footsteps behind her were Lee’s.

Then she saw a flick of velvet at her side.

“It’s just a shame,” she panted, “that everything Arthur annoyed is so
big
.”

“It’s not a shame at all,” said Lee. “Look back.”

She swung round and her torch beam shone on a tangle of legs, arms and wings stuck at the entrance to the tunnel. They were too big to fit through together.

She slowed down.

“Keep running!” Lee urged. “They’re not all stupid. Someone will sort them out.”

Helen heard Ysbaddaden roaring, “Dragons and giants get to the
back
! Let the questing beast and the boar go
ahead
!”

Lee and Helen ran round the curve in the tunnel and up the slope. Helen’s torchlight slapped against the rock door. It was still shut tight. How were they
going to get out? She didn’t want Lee to tell her more terrifying truths.

“How do we open it this time?”

“Your turn, human girl. You tell me the truth.”

Helen tried to think of something hard to admit, something embarrassing or dangerous. “I lie to my mum about where I go at night!”

“Of course you do. We’ve all done that. Something else, something more.”

Lee stood at her back, facing the darkness, and lifted his sword.

Helen could hear the claws and feet of Arthur’s enemies racing up the tunnel. “I can’t think!” She smacked her hand against the cold rock.

Lee called, “Come no closer, Ysbaddaden, my sword is sharper than any razor.”

Helen shouted over the stamping from the tunnel behind her. “Lee! Ask me a question.”

“With pleasure, Helen. Would you play your music for my people and my followers, if I asked you to?”

Helen knew the truth before he’d finished asking. But she didn’t want to say it out loud.

She kicked the door. It didn’t move. She would have to answer him.

Arthur’s enemies had almost reached them. “Stay back, Ysbaddaden,” warned Lee, “unless you want such a close shave that you lose your head as well as your whiskers.”

Helen could hear the creatures shifting and slithering nearer. Perhaps only Ysbaddaden was afraid of Lee’s blade.

“Quickly, Helen! Tell me the truth. Would you leave your world to play music for the faeries?”

As they stood, back to back, Lee facing Arthur’s enemies and Helen facing the rock door, Helen told him the truth. “Yes. Yes, I would.” The rock shifted under her fingers. “Because the faeries value music more than anyone else does. And because music matters more to me than … anything.”

The rock creaked and rumbled.

Helen gasped. “That’s so selfish of me! I can’t put music before my friends and family. I don’t want that to be true!” But she knew it must be true, because the rock opened.

Lee was standing his ground behind her, holding back the line of Ysbaddaden’s angry companions. Helen could run out and leave him there. She could signal Sapphire and get away from him.

But Lee was here to help Yann, and he was standing between her and danger. Helen grabbed his cloak. “We stay together, remember?” and she pulled him out with her.

As she scrambled up to the summit, she looked down. Past Lee’s glimmering cloak, she saw giants, boars and the snake-headed beast squeezing through the door.

Ysbaddaden was at the front, his white chin leading the way.

“Sapphire!” screamed Helen. She switched her torch off and on, three quick flashes, aiming the signal towards the moonlit water below. But she couldn’t see Sapphire, and the mob was already climbing after them.

“Sapphire!” Helen shrieked again and ran off the summit the only way she could, down the ridge. Lee followed her, but only for a few steps. Helen glanced back. The faery was now facing the white-chinned giant, who pulled a huge wooden mallet from his fur waistcoat and stepped towards Lee. But suddenly Ysbaddaden vanished. His feet flew into the air, he dropped the mallet and slid down the hill.

Helen heard him moan, “Sheep droppings! Sheep droppings on my boots and on my chin! These children have humiliated me too!”

She was about to yell for Sapphire again, when her torch beam bounced off a blue shape flying fast through the night air. The dragon blasted an arrow of fire at the creatures swarming up the hill, then swooped towards Helen and Lee, claws outstretched.

They ducked and Helen yelled, “Not from above! Fly lower and we’ll jump!”

She and Lee stood together on the ridge, watching as Sapphire swerved round a single tree on the slope, sent a bolt of flame at the snake-headed creature, then sprinted along the side of the ridge below them.

“Too fast!” called Helen.

Sapphire swerved again, then flew past slowly enough for Helen to jump off the Lucken Howe onto her broad back.

But Lee didn’t jump. He turned at the last moment to protect Helen’s leap from the bristling boar.

The faery stood on the ridge, facing an opponent with two curved tusks as long and sharp as his one sword. Sapphire flew past again, but Lee didn’t
jump. He just pulled another sword from his belt and threatened the boar with both, one in each hand. The boar hunched its shoulders and took a step forward.

“Come on, Lee!” yelled Helen.

“I can’t take my eyes off this brute in case he charges, so I can’t judge when to jump,” he responded calmly.

“I’ll count, you jump after three!” Helen instructed, as Sapphire turned in the air.

The boar started to run, heavy and hurtling, at the faery.

The dragon flew below the ridge.

Helen shouted, “One, two, three, jump!” and grabbed Lee as he leapt backwards.

As Sapphire swerved up, then hovered above the summit, Helen and Lee could see Arthur’s enemies waving weapons, fists and tusks at them.

Then Ysbaddaden, wiping his filthy chin with his hairy knuckles, yelled, “We can’t reach the children. Let’s hunt for Arthur and his gang at the water.”

So Ysbaddaden led the scaly and bristly creatures, stomping and sliding, down the side of the Lucken Howe.

Helen said, “Let’s run back into the hill while they’re away, and see if Arthur left any clues about where he went next.”

Lee said, “But the biggest monsters couldn’t fit through the door, so they’re probably still in there.”

“I’m prepared to risk it, Lee. We
have
to find the scabbard. Sapphire, please fly us back down.”

But when the dragon angled towards the Lucken
Howe, a crunching impact knocked her sideways. Helen and Lee clung to her spikes as Sapphire tumbled screaming out of the air. They slithered around on her back until she recovered control of her wings and flew upwards again.

Two huge flapping shapes followed them up. Sapphire was being attacked by two massive dragons.

“If those are the dragons from the cave,” Helen yelled, “then the cave might be empty! Sapphire, can you let us off and keep these dragons at bay while we run back in?”

But every time Sapphire flew towards the Lucken Howe, the two bigger dragons bashed and battered her, to force her away from the hill.

Helen was about to yell, “Why don’t you use fire?” when she realised how daft that would sound. The other dragons would be fireproof, just like her friend. So the three dragons fought with their weight, speed and spiked armour.

The attackers used their heavy heads, wide wings, long claws and spiked tails to prevent Sapphire getting back to the hill. As they fought in the air, Helen wondered if these two huge beasts were ancient relatives of the dragons killed by Lancelot and Tristan.

Sapphire, lighter and slimmer, tried to fly round them, but the two dragons worked together, blocking every route, crashing into her from both sides. She kept trying, her body shaking and juddering, her grunts of pain drowning out Helen and Lee’s shouts of shock each time they were nearly thrown off her back.

After half a dozen attacks, Helen screamed, “Sapphire, stop! There probably aren’t any clues anyway. Fly away before they hurt you again.”

But Sapphire roared and tried one more time. She stretched her neck out, drew her wings in and dived between the two enormous dragons. They both lashed out with their claws, and Sapphire screamed fire as her sides and tail were savagely clawed from left and right.

She dropped out of the air, falling toward the hills. One of the dragons flew under her and bashed his head against her stomach, stopping her fall, forcing her up, pushing her away.

Sapphire spread her wings, flapped jerkily and flew away from the Eildons.

The two dragons didn’t follow. They stayed high in the air above the Lucken Howe, circling like sharks, ready to attack if she approached again.

Helen called, “Sapphire, are you ok? Do you need to land?”

The dragon didn’t answer. She just glided slowly towards the ground.

Helen sighed. They’d escaped from the giants and the dragons. But they hadn’t found the scabbard.

Sapphire almost fell into a hole, thumping down with a muffled moan.

Helen let go of the spikes, rolled over the dragon’s wing and landed on her feet. They were in an old quarry: a bowl-shaped hole hacked out of the ground, with man-made cliffs all around and loose rocks underfoot.

Helen ran to Sapphire’s head. “Thanks for coming to save us and for trying so hard to get us back in. Are you injured?”

Sapphire nodded slowly.

“Is it your belly, from those head-butts?”

The dragon shook her head gingerly.

“Your sides and your tail, from those claws?”

Sapphire nodded and moaned again.

“Let me look.”

Helen walked along the bulk of her friend, shining the torch on her scales.

Lee walked with her, saying, “Where did those dragons come from? Were they the wrinkly dragons from the cave, or were they already waiting outside?”

Helen shrugged, looking at the shallow scrapes on her scaly friend’s left side.

Lee kept talking. “They were quite fast for dragons who’d been mouldering in a cave for centuries, weren’t they, Sapphire?”

Sapphire growled.

Helen said quietly, “You’re not helping, Lee. Hold the torch.” She stepped over the dragon’s tail to look at her right side, which was also grazed.

But when she returned to Sapphire’s tail, she found the really painful damage: three scrapes on the left side and two deep rips on the right side, four spikes up from the tip.

The scales were sliced open, a triangular flap of dragonskin was hanging loose, dark blood was welling out and the muscle underneath was glistening through.

Helen swung the rucksack off her back, cleaned her hands, then used swabs to wipe the largest wound.

“Lee, can you get the exotic animals textbook out of my rucksack?”

She wiped the smaller wounds, then took the book and flicked to the reptile section. She found pictures of snakeskin repaired with a complex mattress stitch, read a couple of paragraphs, then looked at pictures of dying lizards.

She walked back to her friend’s head. “I’m sorry, Sapphire, but the right side of your tail is ripped open and a big flap of skin is hanging off.”

Sapphire grunted. Lee translated, “She’s never been cut before. One of the few things that can cut dragon hide is dragon claw. But she’s confident you can heal her.”

Helen sighed. “I can’t sew the flap back on. I couldn’t force a needle through the layers of folded skin your scales are made from, and anyway your skin has started to curl up, so the edges won’t stay together. I’m also worried that the wound might get infected. Who knows what dirt and germs those old dragons had on their claws? And infection in a lizard’s tail can travel up the spinal cord, until it paralyses, then kills.”

Sapphire’s head sank to the ground.

“But if I act fast, I can take away the pain and the danger of infection. If you trust me.”

Sapphire looked at Helen, her silver eyes narrowed with questions.

“If dragons evolved from lizards, Sapphire, then you might have one very useful ability. Lizards can lose the end of their tails when their tail is grabbed by a predator, and their tails can grow back. If you’re descended from the same reptiles as iguanas and geckos, then I can amputate the end of your tail and do you no lasting damage at all.”

Sapphire roared and turned her head away. Helen didn’t need anyone to translate. “Really, my friend, it is the safest thing to do. You won’t get an infection and it will grow back. But I have to do it now, before the skin rips further and the damage gets worse.”

Lee muttered in her ear. “Helen, if you cut off her tail, and it’s bleeding and painful, how will she fly back to the moor? She can’t stay here, near farms and roads, once it’s daylight.”

Helen answered loudly, “If I’m right, Sapphire’s tail will be designed to snap between the vertebrae, and
the nerves and blood vessels will shut off immediately. If I’m right, the tail will hurt
less
and bleed
less
once the end has been removed.”

“If you aren’t right?” Lee and Sapphire asked at the same time.

“If I’m wrong, the tail probably won’t come off at all. We have to try, because you’re already in too much pain to fly straight. So, Sapphire, will you stay still while I take a tiny bit of your tail off, just the very tip?”

Sapphire growled.

“Trust me, Sapphire. I know what I’m doing.” The dragon stared silently at Helen, then nodded once.

As Helen walked back to the tail, Lee whispered, “
Do
you know what you’re doing?”

“I know what I’m trying to do, I just don’t know if it will work on a lizard this big.”

Helen picked up the end of the tail to see how much it weighed, then looked round. “I’m just moving your tail to the left, Sapphire.” Helen staggered over to a nearby boulder. Sapphire shifted her back legs to follow her tail.

Helen laid the tail over the rock, like the plank of a seesaw.

“Lee, hold it steady.”

“But that’s not just the tip!” he objected.

“
Shhh!
” Helen hissed, then called out, “Sapphire, you’re the bravest dragon in the world and I know you can do this. Just stay still.”

Helen jerked the tail down.

It hardly moved. Sapphire had flinched in the other
direction as Helen put pressure on the tail, and the dragon’s tail muscles were much stronger than Helen’s arm muscles.

“I’ve seen this done with an iguana. I
know
it’s possible. I just need a little more force.”

She tried again. The tail didn’t snap, though there was now a pool of blood on the ground.

Lee grimaced. “Do you want me to do it? I could put more weight and strength into it.”

“No. If it takes more strength than I have, then it’s ripping her tail off, not allowing it to break naturally.”

She called along the dragon’s length. “Sapphire, you need to help me. Can you relax on the count of five?” There was a pained grunt from the front of the dragon.

“One, two, three…”
Jerk!

And Helen was holding the end of the tail. Unattached. Snapped off. And wriggling in her hands.

She dropped it on the ground, then shone her torch on the tail’s new end.

She looked with interest at the white curve of bone, and the confusion of flesh and scales around it. There was no blood oozing out of the new wound. The claw rip had bled, but the tail-snapping wound had closed up instantly.

“Sapphire, how are you?”

Sapphire rumbled.

Lee said with a smile, “She says it’s stopped hurting. Now the tip just feels numb. She’ll let you try again. But don’t cheat this time, she says, don’t jerk until you reach five.”

Helen laughed croakily. “Sapphire, we did it. It’s already off.”

Helen and Lee had to leap out of the way, as the dragon whipped round in a circle, trying to see her own tail.

“No!” yelled Helen. “Don’t get dirt in the wound! You don’t want to get an infection.”

Sapphire roared and Lee shouted over her. “She’s saying that’s not just the tip! That’s about half of her tail! She doesn’t believe that will ever grow back.”

“I had to break that much off, because the damage went up that far. Now stay still!”

Sapphire lay down, with angry orange fire in her nostrils; Lee took the twitching tail-tip away to bury it; Helen cleaned the end of the tail and placed gauze over it.

“There. It will grow back, long and blue and spiky. Before midsummer, I’m sure you’ll have a perfect tail again.” Then Helen sighed. “There’s no real rush to get back to Cauldhame Moor, because we don’t have anything to show for our quest. So you don’t have to fly me and Lee back if you can’t carry us, Sapphire.”

In answer, the dragon flapped her wings vigorously, and raised her snout to the sky.

As Helen repacked her rucksack, Lee crouched down beside her, wiping his hands on a swab. He spoke softly, “I’m sorry, Helen. I’m sorry we both said such scary things to open that door, and we haven’t even saved Yann by doing it.”

“The truth isn’t always a good thing, is it?” Helen didn’t look at him. She closed the book and slid it into
her rucksack. “I’m sure you did tell the truth, Lee, and I have a horrible feeling I did too. But if you’re really my friend, please don’t test it out by asking me. Please.”

He stood up and his cloak swirled round him. “I won’t ask you to bring your music to us this spring equinox. Right now, I’m here to help Yann. But I make no promises for after that.”

“Then I promise you,” Helen stood up too, “that I will try my hardest to find reasons to stay here. I’ll find people who value my music here.”

Lee smiled. “No one values music more than we do.”

Helen frowned. He was probably right. But she would fight to stay in her own world, even if what she was fighting was her own desire to play for the most appreciative audience.

Once Helen and Lee were on Sapphire’s back, the dragon struggled to rise into the air, then lurched from side to side, working out how to balance with a shorter tail.

When they were flying, slightly squint, away from the Eildons, with no sign of other dragons in the sky or giants on the ground, Helen called to Lee, “Should we warn someone about all those angry creatures loose around Melrose?”

Lee yelled, as Sapphire grumbled her way above the clouds, “They’ll be safely back in the hill before anyone wakes up. They’re too stupid to come up with another plan to attack Arthur. They’ll hide in that cave for centuries.”

“So where can we search for the scabbard now? I
don’t know any other local Arthur legends.”

Lee replied, “He’s linked with lots of different hills, mostly in England and Wales. He probably left here after he was woken by that horse-trader. The Eildons weren’t secure after that. Perhaps anywhere there is a legend of him sleeping is somewhere he has already left. If Arthur doesn’t stay anywhere once he’s been seen, we can’t track him using stories. I hate to admit failure, Helen, but I don’t think we can find Arthur and his scabbard fast enough to save Yann.”

Helen shivered. “So we’d better hope someone else’s quest is more successful than ours.”